Your tax dollars at work:
In order to monitor and protect the health of animals that are used for human consumption, the federal government and leading agribusinesses in America have come together for a major joint effort. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) will cost around half a billion dollars by 2009. The recurrent expenses include the cost of tags and system upgrades. These could be as high as $122 million each year.
-RFID Gazette
This does not include the cost to livestock owners which will be orders of magnitude higher than that. While tags cost only about $3 in large quantities, there is also the cost of applying them, failed tags, labor, computer systems, readers, applicator equipment, etc. The Australian NLIS experience has shown that while the promised cost was $3 per head the real cost is more like $37. Everything the government does gets delivered late, doesn’t work as expected and costs more than expected.
A typical small livestock owner such as a micro-farmer, horse owner or homesteader will see a cost of $500 to $5,000 per year over and over every year. This represents a hidden tax on their family’s food. Much of that money goes to the government approved RFID suppliers and other tool providers who are getting rich at the government trough.
Consumers will feel the pinch too as our national food supply is consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer large corporations. Big corporations are no sweet hearts. They aren’t going to just absorb these billions of dollars in annual costs. They will pass the costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices. As Big-Ag gains monopoly control they will further raise prices in addition to covering their costs for NAIS. Both mean higher prices at the market for consumers. Everyone’s going to feel the pain. A typical family food budget will go up an extra 1% to 2% beyond sales tax and inflation. That’s a hidden tax on food.
It is not just your privacy and basic Constitutional rights they’re stealing away - they’re picking your pockets too.
Also see: Costs of Compliance
It might even be more than $500-$5,000 for the farmer.
A lot of farmers buy vaccinations and self treat their animals.
I was reviewing, again, the presentations from the NIAA conference (Thank you Sharon!)
Presentations posted here
And a number of them reference regulatory health care for the animals. I looked that up and it means the veterinarians have to add into the database when your animals get their medical care. The owners can’t do it because they don’t have that reporting software.
They can enter when an animal goes to the vets but not when treatment is given.
What will small farmers do that have to self treat? Many vets enter into exclusive contracts with commercial producers and don’t have access to vets.
And this will add costs not even considered.
Comment Breederville — September 15, 2006 @ 8:05 am
I profit $.75 a dozen eggs and $2 per chicken–if I’m lucky. Pork, Beef and Lamb margins aren’t much better given my scale and location. The real reason I raise livestock and grow produce is to know where it comes from and have it on hand when I need it. It’s the freedom and work which make it worthwhile. Sure the food I raise costs me far more than I could get it anywhere else from. But it pays for itself and teaches my children values beyond those society now deem important.
I just love the way other people want to have their hands in my pockets. It’s not enough that we subsist at the poverty level. Now we are asked to bolster the profits of corporate agri-business and carry the weight of Executives who are so far removed from the reality of the American Small Farm as to be laughable.
And it isn’t just the NAIS which wants a claim to our wallet. This is another problem–producers wanting more money which they split with the USDA.
With the economy in an unbelievably bad state and the Government lying about it how long is this denial going to go on? The middle class is becoming extinct. The legions of the working poor are growing by the score–as are the ranks of the insanely wealthy–and the one escape from the madness–homesteading and a self-sufficient way of life is being erradicated. Who is going to pay for Govenment blunders and folly when we’re all broke? War on terror, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on flu, war on farms, err I mean livestock diseases. . .where will the line be drawn? Enough is enough. The governments check has bounced. It’s time for Americans to re-invest in America, starting at the local level by supporting local farmers and keeping their money where it matters–at home.
Comment Podchef — September 15, 2006 @ 9:45 am
Has anyone heard what brand of spinach is contaminated with e-coli? I haven’t heard a thing about where it came from. Around here the only prepackaged spinach is Dole.
Shouldn’t there be a traceback on such a serious threat to health & safety?
Doubtless, had it been from a family owned organic truck farm and only a few locals became ill, the whole region would have suffered spinach depopulation.
[I’ve read that the primary cause of this type of contamination is field workers who do not have adiquate access to bathroom facilities and end up relieving their bowels in the crop fields thus fertilizing the crops with uncomposted humanure. Apparently this is even more of a problem outside the USA. An interesting point on this particular case is that the government said the bacteria is so tightly bound to the spinach that washing will not remove the E. coli. This suggests to me that the spinach was grown in raw ‘man-ure’. -WJ]
Comment donna — September 15, 2006 @ 2:19 pm
The news isn’t saying what brands of spinach are affected. They are claiming California is probably the source–but only because they grow the most spinach in the country.
This sort of thing never attracts the sort of attention it should–that large scale, centralized food supplies are rife with problems. Instead, the only cry heard is for more regulation. That animal manure (ie, Organic production) is wrong, because it spreads poison on the crops. No one will stop to explain that properly aged manure is safer, cleaner and more effective than all the chemical fertilizers out there. No one stops to say–hey, spinach is a quick growing crop, plant some in your window box and find a local source. They just cry “Regulate! Regulate! Help us we’re stupid and need protection. . . .”
Obviously this is a tragedy and never should have happened. It is completely avoidable and shows the problems of large scale agribusiness in the harsh reality of day light–the manufacturers of this spinach don’t care for their workers–who may have spread the disease–their customers, whom they poisoned, or other vendors of bagged spinach whose profits they have stolen by making all bagged spinach suspect. The “economies of scale” have let down the public once again. Access to cheap labor, cheap fertilizers–whether humanure, or raw manure-lagoon slurry–and poor quicker, faster, cheaper mentalities lead the rich agri-corp execs to get richer while the citizens get sick. And the real bothersome thing is, now people who think their food comes from the supermarkets will see all farmers in a cold light, and Organic, small, local farmers will feel the back-lash of this when they shouldn’t, when they should be the heros and champions who will save our nation from disease outbreaks like this.
On a different subject, but oh so closely related, has anyone seen this?
The spinach outbreak will only fuel the madness further.
Comment Podchef — September 15, 2006 @ 5:54 pm
Dear Concerned Patriots and Homesteaders:
May I offer the following inspirational quotes? Here goes:
“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from his government.” -Thomas Paine
Historically, the most terrible things–war, genocide and slavery–have resulted from obedience, not disobedience.
~Howard Zinn
“…if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
May the above quotes inflame the masses, and may we take the words to heart in order to be free. Oh, that we could have another Boston Tea Party to bring the USDA to its knees! Why are we funding the machine that seeks to oppress us in order to line their fat pockets? How can we describe ourselves as “free” if we have no control over where our food comes from? Is there any way a lawsuit can be used to challege the USDA people and their agribusiness puppet-string pullers? It is so comically unjust that principle would surely win.
Let us hang in there and take every opportinity to become a counterfriction to the NAIS nonsense until it peters out. Remember, the bigger the giant is, the harder they fall.
Let’s git ‘er done!
Comment John Sherrer — September 15, 2006 @ 8:45 pm
link Podchef the link is directly related to NAIS see Sept. 28th agenda…
E. Traceability
National Animal ID System
Valerie Ragan, President, Agwork Solutions L.L.C.
Australian System
Dean Merrilees, Minister Counselor, Australian Government
Also is organic our organic meaning, the USDA organic meaning, just the Company name not reality or imported mixed in organic from only God knows where mixed with US grown…when we are talking organic spinach… I also would like to know why the dates on the packages are ‘Best if Used by Dates’ of August 17 through October 1st.” I have never been able to keep fresh spinach that long so how is it done “if organic”, not preserved somehow. I know my spinach is free of additives etc., but what is organic and why just report it Sept. 14 almost a month into the dating because e coli shows up fast.
So many questions but to me organic label means nothing in the market place any more if you do not know your source like locally grown, saw it in the ground know the family that grew it, or did it myself.
If grass fed means feedlot fed then organic could mean drowned in preservatives, came from way, way down south grown in unknown conditions and only packaged in USA or any number of other meanings. Another venture in chaos via the USDA, FDA and EPA and the meaningless meanings that used to mean something solid and true.
SO MANY QUESTIONS…no answers
Comment Sue Karber — September 16, 2006 @ 12:54 am
Wow you all are really pumped up and cooking..reference; Dear Concerned Patriots and Homesteaders..
I say: This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
however,
If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag.
We the people of this “grassroots” legitimate, law abiding, forward moving group, have no cause to “overthrow” our own government, only Right the Wrongs, it may bring along with all that freedom.
Be cautious, not to be to inflammatory in Right, that Pride may lead you into a future wrong action.
Ours is to remain Free, using the laws of the land, and freedoms we will retain, not to create chaos, and overthrow our own government. Right or wrong it has worked well for 225 years. They just need a good swift “grassroots” kick in the pants, right now.
Terrorism by anyone, in any form, is just plain wrong. If the cop breaks the law to enforce the law, he is wrong, and society needs to demand action for accountability.
If the USDA is wrong and violated the laws of the land “We the People” demand to hold them responsible for their actions and be accountable..
but “We” do that within the boundaries of the Laws of the Land.
This is a “grassroots” honorable cause, not seeking money, donations, or personal rewards for our actions.
We the People are fighting “Injustice” with “Justice for all” with our great Nation’s laws..not chaos, terrorism, nor UN-honorable deeds.
God’s Speed to all of us!
HONORABLY DONE!
PS: Keep You Powder Dry,
for when they illegally “Step foot” Upon Your “Own” Ground (Premises)!
Dean A. Ayers
Glenwood, Iowa 51534
DeanOSI @netscape.com
IOWANS AGAINST NAIS
NAIS is Exactly the “WRONG” Answer!
Just VOTE, “NO” to Deadwood Politicians, who won’t say “NO” to NAIS!
Comment DeanAFOSI (IOWA) — September 16, 2006 @ 10:15 am
Dear DeanAFOSI,
I appreciate your comments, but you are missing my point! I said what I said in my earlier post because the government is attempting to overstep its boundaries! If the government would just honor our constitutional and privacy rights, there would be no need for NoNAIS!
It appears that the USDA is steamrolling ahead with its plans of such implementation in the face of widespread and strong opposition. Millions upon millions of dollars are set aside to implement this thing.
Sure, I am with you — hold the people who violate the law of the land accountable, but how realistic is that? The USDA people are well-cushioned and protected by enormous sums of money and their puppet lawyers that draw up papers to protect them — how do we hold them accountable? Hmm.. If there is a will, there is a way, right?
Sure, we can vote the bums out come November — I’d be the first to do so. But, can we rely on the newly elected to resist monetary bribes to carry out the USDA agenda? I would hope so.
Small farmers are the salt of the earth — what a tragedy it would be to see them become extinct, and all our food comes from a handful of agricorporations. If NAIS becomes the law of the land, THEN, I say break the law!
For the Freedom for those who love the Land and their animals– And for the Freedom for ALL Americans!
Comment John Sherrer — September 16, 2006 @ 4:05 pm
Attn to posts 4 and 6.
Sue and Podchef,
Look at the sponsors page of your link.
Veriprime is Verichip.
Applied Digital Solutions does business as:
VeriChip, VeriMed, VeriPrime, VeriPay and VeriKid (and many more ‘affiliates’).
Comment Breederville — September 16, 2006 @ 10:02 pm
Post 3, Donna:
Natural Selection Foods Statement
We have decided to voluntarily recall all of the products which contain spinach in all the brands we pack with “Best if Used by Dates” of August 17th through October 1st. Brands include: Dole, Natural Selection Foods, Pride of San Juan, Earthbound Farm, Bellissima, Rave Spinach, Emeril, Sysco, O Organic, Fresh Point, River Ranch, Superior, Nature’s Basket, Pro-Mark, Compliments, Trader Joe’s, Ready Pac, Jansal Valley, Cheney Brothers, Coastline, D’Arrigo Brothers, Green Harvest, Mann, Mills Family Farm, Premium Fresh, Snoboy, The Farmer’s Market, Tanimura & Antle, President’s Choice, Cross Valley, Riverside Farms. Products include spinach and any salad with spinach in a blend, both retail and foodservice products. Products that do not contain spinach are not part of this recall.
Comment Breederville — September 16, 2006 @ 11:35 pm
From Jeffers Livestock supply www.jefferslivestock.com
Allflex brand:
50pc. RFID Ear Tag (cattle)–
$197.50 + dropship charge ($10.00) + $10.95 shipping = $218.45 for 50 RFID Ear Tag ($4.37 per tag)
Allflex brand:
25 pc. Non RFID Ear Tag (cattle) — 2x($26.95) + 7.95 S/H = 61.85 ($1.24 per tag)
——————————-
The RFID tags cost 72% more than non-RFID tags.
——————————-
NOTE: Neither myself or my girlfriend have taken the time to call Jeffers to ask if they will refund/return/replace any SINGLE nonfunctioning RFID tag.
NOTE: We haven’t found any other way of purchasing these RFID tags. Our local farm supply stores haven’t started carrying them. We have been unable to find any other websites besides Jeffers that sell RFID tags to the public. So we aren’t able to do any type of price comparison.
NOTE: We have been unable to find any place that sells RFID tags for animals other than cattle.
——————————-
Other hardware expenses:
RFID stickreader (with ability to download straight to a laptop) $500.35 + the shipping costs.
“Value” laptop from Dell.com is $499. US not including S/H.
RFID reader (without ability to download straight to laptop)
$199.95
——————————-
Comment Jolly Sapper — September 17, 2006 @ 10:58 am
“Natural Selection Foods” being involved in a recall for a potentially life threatening bacteria contaminating its product. The irony has not been lost to me.
Comment Jolly Sapper — September 17, 2006 @ 11:00 am
“MAD COW” Politics and the USDA-NAIS, is affecting every American with a PET or Animal, and it does not matter whether you live in the city or rural areas, in every State!
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sewed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. The railroad of traditional animal production & farming, now to include just mearly owning a PET!
Don’t you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don’t you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don’t you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody.
I am just telling how it is.
It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell,
- “voluntarily” sell -
himself every day and hour to the “beast” of property violating profiteers, called corporations, in this case, Big Agri-Biz corporations, backed up by Big Govi-Biz political corporations, called Republicans and Democrats, who are “Incumbent,” on staying that way.
The slogan of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) ought to propaganda-ize, that they, the USDA, the commaless, Shelter You in America, by killing off your “Property Right’s,” piece by piece, then fining and billing you for the farm privilege, should you survive their “Stamping Out.”
The truth of the matter is, however,
that USDA landlords shelter no one,
while in fact the law shelters them and their profiteer sponsors, from the immediate “expropriation” that would occur
if there were not force of gun and jail
to back up this phony, abusive, so-called USDA - NAIS “de facto” property right, which in fact, is a violation of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights!
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence
reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and “both” commonly succeed, and are right.
Regarding the NAIS, an election is coming.
Universal peace is declared and the foxes (both Republican and Democrat) have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry, soon to be called the “NATIONAL HERD!” That means YOU!
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. That is what they are doing in NAIS and politics for re-election, right now.
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle. Politicians are like diapers.
They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.
Heck, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against. We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.
I Say:
I think it’s about time we voted for representatives and senators with breasts.
After all, we’ve been voting for “boobs” long enough.
Just VOTE, “NO” to Deadwood Politicians, who won’t say “NO” to NAIS!
Whether they have breasts or not is not the question.
Whether they have any “balls,” to Stop the NAIS; “IS!”
“WE THE PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BEAR “FARMS!” “WITH PETS and ANIMALS!”
Dean A. Ayers
Glenwood, Iowa
DeanOSI @netscape.com
IOWANS AGAINST NAIS (The National Animal Identification System)
NAIS is Exactly the “WRONG” Answer!
These comments are on a soapbox on www.Congress.org
Please pass them on to your Congressmen. Thank you.
Comment DeanAFOSI (IOWA) — September 17, 2006 @ 3:43 pm
Breederville, thanks for the heads up. Did anyone else notice that Bayer was a sponsor? Aren’t they the ones who screwed up and allowed experimental rice into the market place and are now trying to lobby the USDA to retroactively make it okay to sell their untested GM rice to Americans?
The very people we as consumers need protection from are banding together to protect us. Ironic, no? Not to mention this E. Coli outbreak. . .as suspicious a timing as a downer cow on the eve of a vote for BSE funding.
Comment Podchef — September 17, 2006 @ 11:19 pm
I was wondering about the age of the spinach too. I do regularly buy bagged spinach in the winter. I get about a week out of it if I close the bag tight. Mostly I buy it for an ancient pet guinea pig when other greens aren’t available from the backyard. Maybe some secret piggy preservative because Pig has lived roughly double the normal lifespan.
I used to get old bread from one of the delivery guys at the store to feed my chickens. He didn’t have to account for the outdated stuff so he would just dump a few trays in the back of my car. A loaf of wheat bread got pushed up under my front seat somehow and went unnoticed for nearly all the summer. It didn’t mold. With all the wet weather we have been having here it should have been a bag of green slime. Same with a packaged doughnut next to it. Just dried out a bit. Forever food scares me. No more stale bread for the chickens. I’m a little jumpy about what I buy to feed my family now too. Been hitting the local bakery instead.
Notice the sell by dates on Nesquik flavored milk products sometime. That gives me the willys. Milk don’t last 4 months!
Walter, you don’t think those highly paid migrant workers are crossing a 100+ acre spinach field to use the porta-potties at the end of a row that stretches to the horizon???
Comment Sue F — September 18, 2006 @ 2:30 am
the usda is endangering
your food supply.
here’s why:
in order to corner
the market,the
government
(neither by or for us)
and the USDA (department of agi-biz)
have made a deal
to take the real farmers out,
one rule and regulation
at a time, with a system they named
the national animal id system,
for preventing diseases they claimed,
in which all independant farmers
will be blamed
and therefore should be eradicated
in the name of food security.
They should be ashamed,
but they have no shame
only greed and addiction
for power and fame.
If the city people refuse to wake up
their silence will be their consent
for the USDA to have its way in
eradicating the American way.
What will be left when the farmers are gone?
Factory Farms and food choices none.
For inferior foods you will have to pay
What ever the corporations say…..
Imagine a world with only factory farms.
Then get out on the street
and voice your alarms….
Your survival depends upon it.
The spinach scare proves that
only locally grown foods including meat is safe….know
your farmer;know your food..
We have a year if we are lucky
to get all the consumers
educated about locally grown
foods..this is what we should
be concentrating on..not
fighting the USDA or the
government….when people
compare Good quality foods
with factory-farmed they will
be convinced..remember the city
people will be the ones who
decide the fate of farmers
so education is the key issue
as it always is….everybody
save seeds
plant a garden
get animals
get ready
our survival depends on it….
Comment sid sargent — September 18, 2006 @ 10:33 am
Tie this to the clean water act, which requires fencing all streams(wet or dry), both sides back 500 feet and you have eliminated ALL small ranchers and farmers.
Comment Chuck Sampson — September 18, 2006 @ 1:51 pm
Irony indeed! Only the most fit survive whether human, animal, or plant in our engineered world.
Comment donna — September 18, 2006 @ 4:56 pm
Re: 14, Podchef.
I didn’t realize the story about Bayer and the rice; but I do know that Bayer has an exclusivity contract to be the sole distributors of Pet identification microchipping. Yes, they do have affiliates that they do business as; but they ar the top cahuna.
Bayer is in a colicensing agreement with Johnson and Johnson for codevelopment partnerships.
This is where it gets very interesting.
Robert Wood Johnson, was co-founder of the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey is a medical center of, Robert Wood Johnson Medical.
UMDNJ is one of the largest Foundation Grant suppliers of NAIS/Healthy People 2010.
Comment Breederville — September 18, 2006 @ 9:04 pm
Here’s a sickening article about using human sewage on food crops. The web address is sooo long, I will just give the main page:
link
Search “Faeces on food crops” and you will have the article. (spelling is correct)
During the Vietnam war, my husband was stationed in Taiwan, and my infant daughter and I joined him. We were warned to never bathe, bleach all vegetables in a bath for ten minutes, and never drink the water. I was EXTREMELY careful those two years, yet my daughter and I both developed a raging case of dysentery. They used human sewage on the food crops, which they called “honey dipping”. The only vegetables we had to eat were from the local economy. I have always suspected that the cases of hepatitis from Mexican strawberries, Costa Rican raspberries, and Mexican green onions were a result of this practice. After all, isn’t it all about money?
Comment Texas Goat Gal — September 23, 2006 @ 7:19 pm